Thrashed out and on the way out

Knackered. Seriously knackered. It's 8pm and we're back in our hotel. Let me explain.

After an unexpectedly crazy Monday night c/o altruistic Canadians and a complete lack of self control we had a late start and barely managed to hold down breakfast (OK, that's an exaggeration, but I felt poorly). Finally making it out of here around 10.30 we caught the same tuk tuk driver and went to the Royal Palace. His tourist senses must have been sleeping because the damn thing was shut for the public holiday, Silver Pagoda and all. If we'd been less lazy and less desperate for a beer on any other given day we could have gone into it. Oh well.

Having failed (epic) on the Royal Palace thing, we did a lame tourists' walk around the boundary, taking a few snaps through the gates - it is quite a spectacular-looking compound - then went to the national museum which was, luckily, open. That was pretty cool overall, loaded with a bizarre mix of religious iconography and statues coming out of its jaxie.

We'd developed a thirst by then, and not quite ready for the demon drink we stopped in at a fantastic fruit juice/smoothie joint where we downed some much needed dragon fruit and tangerine drinks. Our planned walk took us past the Independence Monument once again, and soon enough we'd ended up at Ph 57, our latest favourite street. We were hunting some bar called 'Gasolina', but needing fuel for the journey we stopped at the Green Mango for lunch.

After an unsuccessful jaunt up part of 57 we returned to the scene of last night's debacle, or the beginning of it anyway, where Bec had initially seen the advertisement for the photo exhibition we'd been looking for. I had a beer and Bec had a passionfruit and Cambodian honey smoothie, which truly rocked, just for sake of appearances, before we headed off again seeking this mysterious Gasolina place.

Despite my misgivings, we continued along 57 well past the known tourist zone and eventually stumbled onto Gasolina, which turns out to be this fantastic garden bar/bed sit/art zone. We'd come specifically to see a photo display called 'Smile Cambodia' which set up 8 or 10 young kids living literally on a landfill in Phnom Penh with cameras and sent them out to document their city. The pics are awesome and incredibly emotive; we'll be buying a few things from them I reckon. I should also mention about the bar itself that seating primarily consisted of massive outdoor covered beds with massive pillows; if we'd arrived earlier I could have been in a lot of trouble.

Having had a Tiger and some crazy Belgian beer we jumped on a tuk tuk and headed to the other side of the city i.e. ours and had drinks at the Raffles-owned Hotel Le Royale, which, as the name suggests, is like something out of a Bond movie. The Elephant Bar, where we drank, is the plushest (and potentially overpriced) joint in town, so we timed our landing to coincide with happy hour - cocktails $4 US or thereabouts; expensive by local standards, but stand-out cocktails.

With motivation waning we stumbled to a German and Swiss restaurant immediately behind the hotel and ate a very German meal - mostly meat. We didn't even finish the one beer we ordered between us and we're now back at the hotel, conveniently close to bed around 8:30.

Tomorrow we're off to Battambang, and I'm looking forward to 4 days of not much at all. We'll report again from there.